Students work inside the virtual environment of CyberPatriot

Feature Photo By: Caroline Smith – Mr. Mills talks to the members of the club about upcoming competitions. Within every competition, there are specific guidelines to follow and several expectations.

By: Caroline Smith, Review Staff

Are you interested in working inside a virtual environment to repair and protect technology? Then join the CyberPatriot Club that meets every Tuesday after school in Mr. Mills’ room, room 226.

Randy Mills is the CyberPatriot coach, technology coordinator, and engineering teacher of Rangeview High School.

“It’s a club that was started nine years ago,” said Mr. Mills. “It was started with the intent of preparing students for a job in the Cyber Security world.”

One of Mills’ goals is to go back to nationals with three groups that he thinks have great potential and are strong. In the CyberPatriot national competitions, they compete against 6,000 teams throughout the country. Only the top 12 teams are accepted into the finals for nationals.

“We’ve been to the national finals twice in the last nine years. We finished fourth and sixth in the past few years.”

The CyberPatriot Club poses for a picture. As you can see, the club is male dominant, which is typical for stem programs; however, there has been a substantial growth of females throughout the past few years (Caroline Smith).

Mills continues to talk about their successes and how strong they were throughout the competitions.

Freshmen Sarah Lemoi said, “My goal is to take what I know from the club and put it into my career because I’m looking to go into IT.”

So far, Lemoi has learned a lot about computers and has gained tons of knowledge about technology.

“I can do a lot more, since I joined the club and can fix things a lot better,” Lemoi continues. “It’s just pretty neat!”

Another member of the club, sophomore Matthew Yohanes, has been interested in computers and other technology since middle school and his interests have only been more developed within the club.

“‘I’m not here exactly to win, I’m just here to gain knowledge and get experience with cybersecurity.”

Yohanes went on to explain what he has learned and what he is most excited about for this year in the club.

“I’ve gained a lot of experience with Windows and now I’m learning a lot with Linux, which is another operating system, so I’m learning a lot about computers. Also, I’m looking forward to getting really good with Linux.”

Yohanes additionally comments that new members are needed, and anyone is welcome to join the club.

Mills stated, “We have been very very successful. We were actually one of the strongest programs in the state of Colorado.”

Mills says that during this competition, they were recognized as being a very strong team, and they still remain strong and skilled.

“12 teams out of a total of over 6,000, that’s really long odds, but I got some people right now that I think are some of the best I’ve ever had in nine years of doing this,” Mills stated.

The CyberPatriots next competition is this Saturday, November 17th at 7am at Rangeview.